We all have videos we’d rather forget.
YouTube hosts a lot of fascinating, entertaining, and educational content. It also hosts a lot of trash, and we’d rather not have that trash in our search histories, our watch histories, or in the YouTube recommendations that are generated from those histories. Do you want Google to autocomplete to “red hot baby mommas” every time you start looking for a Red Hot Chili Peppers video? Did you forget to switch accounts before handing it off to your little ones and now your recommendations are littered with those mind-numbing toy demos?
Or worse. Much, much worse.
Never fear, we can scrub that data from YouTube and get you back to what you really want to see — more cat videos.
- How to delete single videos from your watch history
- How to clear your watch history
- How to pause your watch history
- How to delete single searches from your search history
- How to clear your search history
- How to pause your search history
How to delete single videos from your watch history
If you just want to purge one or two videos from your history, it’s easy to purge them directly from your History page.
Launch YouTube on your Android phone or tablet.
Tap the Library tab in the bottom-right corner of your screen.
Tap History.
Tap the three-dot menu icon to the right of the video you’d like to delete.
Tap Remove from Watch history. You will see the video vanish from the history, with the message that This item has been removed from your history.
You will see the video vanish from the history, with the message that This item has been removed from your history.
How to clear your watch history
Deleting your entire watch history can seem a little extreme, but there does come a point where it’s easier to just get yourself a clean slate and start over. Getting a clean slate is nice and easy, too:
Launch YouTube from your home screen or the app drawer.
Tap your avatar in the top right corner of your screen to open the Account screen.
Tap Settings.
Tap History & privacy.
Tap Clear watch history.
Tap OK to confirm that you want to purge your watch history.
A small toast notification will appear on the bottom of the screen to indicate your Watch history cleared successfully. You can now start fresh. Want to avoid doing this again? There’s a handy setting in this same menu you should familiarize yourself with.
How to pause your watch history
YouTube gets that there are eventually going to be other people who use your account on your devices or times you use their service outside your normal time-killing. Thankfully, YouTube will let you press pause on your watch history should you need to turn your phone over to a small child or a drunk roommate or need to go exploring things for work/school/passion projects.
Launch YouTube.
Tap your avatar in the top right corner of your screen to open the Account screen.
Tap Settings.
Tap History & privacy.
Tap Pause watch history.
The toggle will turn blue as it slides over to on. From now until you switch it back off, videos you watch in either YouTube or YouTube Music on any device will not be added to your watch history. To turn it back off, come back and tap Pause watch history again to turn it off.
How to delete single searches from your search history
Every time you tap the search bar in the YouTube app, your search history opens up, revealing what you’ve searched for, in case you want to search for it again. Problem is sometimes we hit enter before we mean to, and we hit search without realizing what horrible words autocorrect has put in the search box. If you need to delete this errant searches, or searches of a more embarrassing manner, here’s how to delete them.
Launch YouTube.
Tap the search icon.
Press and hold the search query you wish to delete.
Tap Remove.
The search will disappear. If you only need to purge one or two searches, this is easy, but if your search box has been completely overrun with searches you’d rather forget, we can give ourselves a clean slate
How to clear your search history
You want to go nuclear and start your search queue completely over? Not a problem. YouTube will let you clear your YouTube search history easily.
Launch YouTube.
Tap your avatar in the top-right corner of your screen to open the Account screen.
Tap Settings.
Tap History & privacy.
Tap Clear search history.
Tap OK to confirm that you want to purge your search history.
Now when you tap the search icon in YouTube, things will be much cleaner, at least for a little while. If you know you’re going to be searching for things you’ll never want to search for again or things that don’t remotely relate to what you want in your recommendations, you can keep them from getting added to your search history in the first place.
How to pause your search history
By pausing your search history, you can hand your phone off to your kid and let them search for all those ridiculous toy unwrapping videos and Frozen sing-alongs without the searches polluting your stream. It’s a good tool to have, I only regret that it takes this many taps to reach it — this should be something you can turn on from the search bar.
Launch YouTube.
Tap your avatar in the top right corner of your screen to open the Account screen.
Tap Settings.
Tap History & privacy.
Tap Pause search history.
The toggle will turn blue as it slides over to on. As with watch history, while the pause is engaged searches will not be added to your history on any device. To turn it back off, come back and tap Pause search history again to turn it off.
Questions?
Let us know in the comments below.
